Dark Life (review)

Fifteen-year-old Ty was raised on the ocean floor, and he can't wait to homestead his own plot of underwater land and become independent. Catastrophic conditions above water have led to the population being crowded into extremely small pieces of land, but even in these circumstances, most Topsiders are suspicious of anyone who chooses to live at the bottom of the ocean. Ty, on the other hand, would never give up the space, freedom, and adventure of his life, and he is alarmed when a roving gang of raiders threatens all of the ocean pioneers. In addition, his routine is thrown off by the arrival of Gemma, a brash and attractive Topsider teen in search of her missing brother. She speaks her mind freely and takes risks he can't imagine taking, becoming both the antidote to his predictable life and a challenge he isn't at all sure he can handle. Ty and Gemma are realistically different from each other in ways that make their early sparring and later romance feel authentic. Unfortunately, romance fans may be the only satisfied readers, as the sci-fi elements on which the plot is primarily based (the above-water situation, the supernatural powers the kids born and raised underwater all seem to be developing, and the government experimentation that has shaped both the gang and the pioneers themselves) are far less carefully crafted than the pairing of Ty and Gemma or the elegant descriptions of oceanic life. Even so, readers will likely find the details of jellyfish-inspired houses and fish farming to be clever, and they will inevitably cheer Ty's hard-won happy ending.